Plan Your Trip Times Picks

Fugitive From a Tour Group

Published: June 4, 1995

(Page 2 of 2)

Pondering the fiasco, I realized that I had to bear some of the responsibility. Overworked and rushed before signing up, I hadn't taken the time to study the brochure carefully, to note the numbers of cities we were going to visit, or the vast distances between them. Even though I usually check out an untried New York restaurant with knowledgeable friends or acquaintances before trying it, I hadn't used the same basic precautions with the tour company.

I rebelled. Midway through the trip, I started doing my own thing whenever possible. One day, I persuaded three cronies to skip the scheduled hasty tour of Perge, Aspendos and Side, and to join me instead on a ramble through the narrow streets of the charming Mediterranean town of Antalya. One of our group bought two rugs -- they were cheaper and of better quality than those in the tour-touted shop -- and we lunched at the lovely Kral Sofrasi restaurant, sitting beneath lemon trees at a table for four (an indescribable pleasure) and eating freshly caught fish that the headwaiter not only artfully deboned but even more artfully reassembled, ornamenting the creature's toothy little mouth with a sprig of parsley. We were scolded that night by one of the tour's obsessive culture vultures. "You mean you came all this way to Turkey and didn't see Perge?" she chided. But we winked at one another. We'd had what had been missing so far: fun.

ANOTHER day, I talked a woman on the tour into having dinner with me at a restaurant in Izmir, a small smoky place jammed with laughing, gossiping Turks. We were seated at a table for six already occupied by three Turkish men, one of whom spoke a little French, another a little English. By this time, I had learned a few words of Turkish, and soon the five of us were chatting away in three languages, and sharing our delicately fried calamari, grilled fish and a huge platter of sweets. On a third occasion, I refused to join the group at the spot where Attilla insisted we must eat our lunch -- the rain-drenched and windswept terrace of the Konyali restaurant in Topkapi -- and fled instead to a warm, carpeted interior room, where for $10 I sat in solitary splendor at a banquette and ate a marvelous stew of lamb and yogurt.

And one afternoon, I went on my own to the intimidatingly mammoth Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, to which the group had gone en masse earlier in the day. I was fearful of getting lost, or being accosted by unshakable rug merchants. But I found my way easily by stopping passers-by for instructions, and just as easily extricated myself from encounters with overly persistent merchants. I also ended up meeting, and eventually taking to tea, a delightful Kurdish youth, who told me the whole story of his young life and his remarkable transition from eastern Anatolian village shepherd to Istanbul English student. I treasured that talk, and knew it was something that would never have happened had I stuck to my troupe of 30.